


Mirrorbright

by Suzelle



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alderaan, Gap Filler, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Leia after Alderaan, POV Leia Organa, Post-ANH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 04:52:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9703097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzelle/pseuds/Suzelle
Summary: The gleaming white of her quarters is such a stark contrast from her cell on the Death Star, but still the walls close in around her, trapping her alone with a reality she can't accept. She searches for shadows of her parents, the smell of starflowers that grew on the palace lawns, anything from her home that once brought her peace.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to Salvage for the beta, and to Francescadarimini and Glompcat for the suggestions and cheerleading as I wrote.

She doesn’t weep, when they take her back to her cell, and she doesn’t weep when the door hisses shut, leaving her locked alone in darkness. Somewhere, dimly, she recognizes that she is in shock, but she exists outside herself now, can hardly feel when she lifts a hand and closes it slowly in on itself, her nails digging into her palm.

Would it have been any different, had she betrayed Yavin?

She lies down on the durasteel bench that serves as a bed, her back pressing hard against the cold metal. The blast of Alderaan flares red behind her closed eyes, accompanied by a dim rushing sound that hasn’t stopped since Tarkin gave the order. Her head aches, a lingering echo of the torture she faced at Vader’s hand, and she finds herself yearning for the physical pain that came from the interrogation droid. Anything, anything but this.

Her only comfort is that soon, she will be dead herself, and if the Jedi of old are to be believed, her family will be waiting for her when she becomes one with the Force.

***

But she doesn’t die, through some miracle or cruel joke, and for a brief period of time she has something to live for. First, it’s the mention of Kenobi and the wild hope her father’s final mission for her can be completed, and then it’s the horrifying realization that R2 is in the hands of her two idiot rescuers—that the plans for the Death Star are right back where they started.

Their escape is a blur she doesn’t quite remember. The journey in the bucket of bolts Solo calls a ship is spent pacing the small living area, calculating in her head how many X-wings they have and their meager odds against the full might of the moon of destruction chasing them.

It’s a risk, revealing the location of the base to Solo, leading the Death Star straight to the Rebellion. She’s already failed once before, and if it happens again the blood of even more of her people will be on her hands. But the Imperials will find them on Yavin soon enough without her help, and the chance to destroy the Death Star and avenge her home is one she can’t squander.

Besides, where else could she go?

She almost breaks, when she steps into the oppressive heat of the jungle and speaks with the deck officer who’s come to meet them, not knowing if she can maintain the mask she’s constructed in front of rebels who know her. But at the end of the hangar bay she sees Commander Willard coming towards her, his expression one of concern and sorrow, and the sight of a familiar face is enough for her to break into a smile for the first time since the _Tantive IV_ was overrun. They’ve never had much more than a professional relationship, but he hugs her now, and she grips his shoulders tightly, using the brief moment to steady herself.

“You’re safe. When we heard about Alderaan we feared the worst.”

The words are a fresh knife through her, the image of the Death Star burned forever into her mind, but the knowledge that Yavin is its next target is enough for her to focus on the task ahead. “We have no time for sorrows, Commander. You must use the information in this R2 unit to plan the attack. It’s our only hope.”

“We’ll get him to our strategists right away.” Willard turns to Luke, Han, and Chewbacca, who are respectively looking awed, bored, and intrigued. “We can’t thank you enough for bringing them back safely to us. The kind of courage it takes to infiltrate the Death Star, not to mention rescuing the Princess...”

“Yeah, well, Chewie and me won’t be sticking around for much longer.” Han interrupts, ignoring the commander’s nonplussed look, and turns back toward Leia. “About that, Your Worship…”

“General Draven handles the financials of the Alliance,” Leia cuts in, taking care to let a false sweetness drip into her tone. “You’ll want to see him about your reward.”

Han is off like a shot, and Leia lets out an irritated sniff as she watches him go. Through the cloud of her fear and grief, the thought of putting him and Draven together fills her with something she remembers as satisfaction. Willard gives her an inquisitive look, but she shakes her head. The last thing she wants to think about right now is Han Solo.

“Where is Mon Mothma?” she asks instead.

“She left two days ago to rendezvous with the portion of the fleet that survived Scarif,” Willard replies. “It looks like we’ll be joining them soon, if we survive this. We’re too compromised here now.”  

“If we survive,” Leia echoes, and places a hand on her head at a sudden jolt of pain. She’d read reports of this, survivors of Imperial torture suffering reverberations weeks afterward, and the pressure forces her to sit back down on the speeder that had brought them in from the _Falcon_. Luke is suddenly at her side and puts his arm around her in a way that, at any other time, she’d consider wildly inappropriate from a near-stranger. Here, now, she appreciates the gesture.

“Hey, are you all right?” His worry is genuine, and she’s struck once more at how young he seems, though he can’t be more than a year or two behind her in age.

“I’m fine.” She gives him what she hopes is a reassuring smile and shakes her head a little, hoping that will clear things out, but it only makes the pain worse. “Just haven’t slept in awhile, is all. A cup of caf and I’ll be good as new.”

Willard is staring down at her, lines of concern etched deeper into his face. “A trip to the med bay is what it sounds like you need.”

“You’ll need everyone you’ve got to plan the attack. I’m not sitting out because of a headache.”

“Leia.” Willard sits down on her other side and takes both her hands in his. A sudden wave of claustrophobia overtakes her, two men flanking her as stormtroopers had so many times these past weeks, but she breathes deeply and releases the panic the way her mother taught her to do. She tries to remember that she’s among allies now. “You’ve endured a great tragedy, more so than any of us here. It’s because of you we have these plans at all. Let us take up the mantle, now. No one will think any less of you if you sit this fight out.”

She squeezes his hand in acknowledgement, but she rises to her feet quickly after. Thankfully, the ground remains steady beneath her, and the pain in her head seems to lessen. “Ask me to sit out when we’re not facing Alderaan’s fate ourselves. I won’t get much rest with the thought of that thing bearing down on us.”

Willard gives her a long, measuring look, and nods in assent.

***

Someone suggests holding a ceremony the next day, to remember the fallen and honor their heroes, and Leia is silent while Dodonna, Draven, and Willard argue back and forth about the appropriateness and practicality of it. There’s a push to start the evacuation immediately, for there’s no telling whether the Death Star beamed away the location of the Rebel base to the rest of the Imperials, but Dodonna argues fiercely that they deserve a chance to rest and take stock of their losses.

“You’re awfully quiet.” Willard finally turns to Leia, giving her the same concerned look he’d been directing at her since they met in the hangar bay. She wishes he’d stop. They’re locked in the smaller briefing room to the side of the main war room, where Leia had stood with her father mere days before, and outside she can hear the laughter and shouts that only come from those who are profoundly grateful to have lived.

“We should remember our dead,” she says, and rises to her feet. “And celebrate what victories we’ve claimed. There have been too few of those.”

She doesn’t wait for a reply, but slips quietly out of the briefing room and up the steep steps that lead to the officers’ quarters.

She didn’t keep much in her small bunk on the base, just enough for the brief weeklong stays that had become common in her dual life as senator and rebel, but her possessions seem to fill the room now, a reminder of her hasty departure to Scarif. Most of the clutter is clothes and old datapads that need to be updated with the latest briefings, but she bypasses them for the duffel that bears the Alderaanian royal seal, reaching for things she’d never bothered to unpack. There’s a formal gown cut in a style that had been fashionable a couple years before, one her mother had insisted she pack along “just in case,” and a necklace of Breha’s that’s meant to accompany the dress. Her hands tremble as she holds the necklace up to the glow rods that have been rigged into lanterns, and it gleams even under the weak light.

“That’s beautiful,” a voice says behind her, and she nearly jumps out of her skin at the sound. She turns and sees Luke standing awkwardly in the doorway, now looking mortified at the sound of her startled gasp.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“No, it’s all right.” Leia holds a hand to her chest and takes a deep breath to steady herself. “I guess I’m a bit jumpy, after—after everything.”

Luke nods in understanding, and Leia invites him to sit beside her. He’s changed out of that horrible poncho he wore for most of their journey back on the _Falcon_ , and is wearing a smart-looking jacket she imagines Wedge or one of the other pilots picked out for him. He gestures again to the necklace. “Was that…was that made on Alderaan?”

Leia nods. Her hands are still shaking, but she fights against the instinct to clench them tight, not wanting to damage the stones. “It’s—was my mother’s. I suppose it’s all I have left of her, now. If I’d known…” she lets out a shuddering sigh.

Luke looks like he wants to reach out and put his arm around her shoulder again, but something stops him this time. She looks up to meet his eyes and sees something of her own pain reflected back there. “I didn’t lose my whole planet, but I…I think I know how you feel, a little bit. They burned down the whole farm, when they killed my aunt and uncle. I don’t have anything left of them, really. I wish I did.”

It’s easy for her to forget, right now, that Alderaanians aren’t the only ones who’ve suffered at the hands of the Empire. Leia sternly wills her hands to stop trembling, and only fumbles for a second with the clasp before she gets it open and fastens the necklace behind her neck. The weight of it grounds her in a way nothing else has managed to so far.

“Anyway.” Luke cuts himself off and gives himself a little shake. “I had a question for you, actually. It’s a bit embarrassing, but…”

“If you want embarrassing, try Han trapping us all in that cell block.” Leia says sardonically. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do that would top that.”

He blushes. “It’s just…do you know what we’re supposed to _do_ , with this whole ceremony thing? I’ve never been to anything like it before.”

Leia bursts into laughter, and has to check herself before it turns into a hysterical fit. It’s a relief, really, to worry for a moment about something so simple.

“I told you, it was stupid…”

Leia reaches out and squeezes his hand. “It’s anything but. Just stick close to me and Han, all right? We won’t let you fall.”

***

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Dodonna looks down at her between bushy white eyebrows, and Leia pushes down a snippy, sarcastic reply. Her irritation at the well-meaning but intrusive old men who are trying to act like her father is about to push out her own grief. Not for the first time, she wishes Mon Mothma were here.

The problem is, she’s not sure if she _is_ up to it. She’s beyond tears, that much has been made clear to her these past days. Yet even now, she doesn’t trust her voice to remain steady when she addresses the entirety of the Alliance or speaks her parents’ names for the first time since their deaths. But there’s no turning back now, and at this point she’ll make it through just to spite Willard and Dodonna.

The temple hall is massive, with a vaulted ceiling that stretches out beyond the hundreds of rebels gathered. There are vines that hang from the ceiling, and Leia fixates on one of them when she steps out onto the dais, unable to meet any of the hundreds of gazes now trained on her. The silence carries a weight all of its own, reminiscent of the hours she spent alone in a Death Star cell. It’s at that thought that she opens her mouth and finds it in her to speak.

“With each victory comes losses uncountable. Today, we’re given new hope and life, but at great cost. We cannot move forward without remembering those we’ve lost…”

She doesn’t remember the rest of her words, but knows they contain platitudes of hope and faith that she no longer believes. She observes herself as if from far away, with a detached sort of curiosity, and is fairly certain she’s plagiarizing one of her father’s older speeches as she speaks. Not that it matters, anyway—any records they might have of it no longer exist.

Then there are commendations to present and happiness to feign, but Luke’s boyish grin is so infectious that she’s brought back to herself, when she hangs the medal around his neck. Even Han tugs what her father would have called an impish look from her, and when she looks out at the cheering members of the Alliance, she’s able for a moment to settle herself in something beyond loss.

Most of the Alliance returns to their duties after the ceremony, and she turns back to Dodonna and Willard, who have remained on the dais with her. “What’s next?” she asks.

“Rest,” Willard commands sternly. “Or a trip to the med bay, your choice.”

Leia bristles. “You can’t order me to—“

“Eight hours, Leia, that’s all I ask.” Willard’s tone softens, and he gestures out to the crowd of people milling about. “Give yourself the same chance you’ve given to them.”

In truth, she’s exhausted, and she can’t remember the last time she got more than a couple hours of sleep at a time. She lingers at the edge of the crowd, contemplating defying Willard’s directive, before she retreats to her quarters to see if his fussing could actually do her some good.  

But when she closes her eyes all she can see is her father’s ghost, and when she lies down there is a sharp weight pressing in on her chest, suffocating in its magnitude. She gives herself four hours of trying to sleep before she finally rises with a snarl. Her hair has fallen halfway out of its braid, and she seizes a brush that’s lying at the edge of her bed, yanking through the tangles and pulling it tight into something that will stay out of the way. This time, she can’t tell if the pain in her head is from her own abuse or another parting gift from Vader’s interrogation droid, and the thought causes her to fling the brush across the wall so hard it cracks in half.

She uses the walk through the temple to compose herself, and the war room is barely organized chaos when she returns to it. She can’t tell if the official order for evacuation has been given, but the communications bay is filled with men and women shouting conflicting orders, and she spies two crew chiefs standing a few feet away from her, flipping through data pads and arguing.

“Have to consolidate the squadron supplies, with Gold gone and Red all but—“

“We can’t afford to just dump it all here, we fought too long to obtain—“

“—and where the _hell_ do those ion cannons go, we can’t just have them sitting around—“

“The ion cannons were brought in from the _Profundity_ ,” Leia says, and the bickering crew chiefs both look up at her in surprise. “We’ll have to load them out on another ship or abandon them here. Check with Dodonna, one of the Hammerheads should be pretty light on storage.”

They stare at her blankly until she gives them her most stern Princess Look, when they snap to attention and each give her a smart salute before heading toward the hangar bay.

“And leave the spare parts for the X-wings behind!” she calls at their backs. “There’s no point lugging around empty shells.”

Willard is leaning over the comms across the room, but he stands at the sound of her voice and gives her a pointed look. She shrugs in response.

“You know anyone else who did inventory when we unloaded? Anyone who’s still alive?”

Willard sighs. It had been the Organas and Garven Dreis, when they first set up headquarters. “Take over from Antilles in the hangar bay. Poor man is running around like a bantha lost in a sandstorm.”

***

It’s easier to forget about herself and get lost in the cause, and issuing commands causes less pain than sitting alone in a bunk. She helps coordinate the evacuation and get Luke settled in among the surviving pilots, and in the most chaotic moments she can almost—almost—forget that her home has been reduced to dust. They’re in a race against whichever Imperial Star Destroyers were beamed the coordinates of their location, and she finds herself dangerously close to wishing that they arrive before the Alliance leaves, just so she can take out a few more Imperials and begin to even out the score.

But they all make it off the planet with no mishaps or casualties, and later, on a Mon Calamari vessel in orbit around Torgruta, she finds herself with several hours to breathe. Luke is following her around like a lovesick puppy, and while in the past days she’s welcomed his company, she can’t bring herself to be his keeper, not tonight. She sends him after Wedge and locks herself in the quarters she’s been assigned, dark save for the dim glow of the monitor across from her bed. She sits and brings up the crew manifest, identifies the few—so few—crew members who hailed from Alderaan. Most of them had been with her on the _Tantive_ or had gone back to the planet with her father, and there are now less than a hundred survivors scattered throughout the fleet.

She keys in a message to them all, inviting them to join her in one of the briefing rooms on the Mon Cal cruiser at 2100 hours. She doesn’t know why she does it, only that she can’t be alone, anymore, and needs to be with people who understand the depth of her loss. She can’t comprehend the reality of it, and when she tries to only finds a gaping chasm within herself, echoing with imagined screams of the dying. Perhaps with others, they’ll find a way to move forward together.

The Mon Calamari kept their ships pristine and humid, and the climate is not so different than the one she just left on Yavin. The briefing room she’s reserved gleams white, brighter than even the _Tantive IV’s_ corridors, and she’s grateful she left most of her senatorial gowns behind on Yavin. She’s wearing her mother’s necklace, though, the thick pieces of silver hanging awkwardly over the grey jumpsuit she’s taken to wearing for her Alliance duties, and she touches it briefly, remembering the way Breha’s hands would run over it when she was impatient or irritated. Slowly, she watches while men and women from around the ship trickle in, their movements so stiff they resembled droids more than sentient beings. She hasn’t looked in a mirror since the day of the medal ceremony, but she imagine she looks about as dreadful as the shocked, haunted faces looking back at her now.

With the exception of a pair of girls she recognizes from her mother’s defense classes, every person here is older than she is herself. They all direct their gazes towards her now, yearning for the same answers and reassurances she herself seeks, and a new horror slowly seeps through her as she realizes she is alone, after all.

The room is silent when she finally rises to her feet, and she doesn’t know if she has it in her to be who these people need her to be. But she is the last surviving member of the House of Organa, and she understands, perhaps for the first time, all the lessons her father had imparted to her about duty.

She looks around the room, meeting as many eyes as she can, and spreads her arms wide. “I’m guessing all that talk of hope and victory sounded a bit hollow, at the ceremony.”

That earns her a couple of bleak smiles.

“We look for words to heal us, but the truth is—I don’t have words, right now. I wish I did. I wish I had a course for us to chart, but—but there’s nothing.” The words catch in her throat, and her eyes fill with tears, but she takes a deep breath and somehow, inexplicably, wills them not to fall. “There’s nothing to prepare us for this kind of loss.”

She can feel Vader’s hand gripping her shoulder, an iron clamp that kept her from rushing forward and doing something, anything to stop the men firing the Death Star. She’d been so weak from torture she doubted she could have done much, but instead he forced her to stand and watch the loved ones of everyone before her be obliterated. A swift hatred consumes her, and her face hardens when she stares out at the crowd. “My father used to say—when things look darkest is when you need to fight the hardest. And that’s all we can do now, is keep fighting. We fight, and we fight harder, until we make them answer for what they’ve done.”

She looks up and sees Mon Mothma standing in the doorway, her face half obscured by shadow, but Leia can still see the tears in her eyes. She tears herself away from that glance—there’s no pity, but there’s something awfully close to it—and looks back at her people, praying that she can be the kind of leader Mon Mothma has been for the entire Alliance.

“We’ve got to keep each other close now, more than ever. If you need anything—anything at all—please know that I’m here.”

They stay, afterward, finding comfort in each other. She hangs back, not sure if her presence will do any more good, but she’s soon approached by an older woman who she vaguely recognizes from Cassian Andor’s intelligence unit. Dimly, she wonders how she’s still here and not ash on Scarif, but she smells the faint but distinct trace of bacta when she shakes the woman’s hand and decides not to ask.

“It’s Shana, isn’t it?”

The woman nods. “I had a son, about your age. Wanted to join up with the Alliance too, but I— insisted he stay and finish his time at University…”  

Leia draws in a sharp breath.

“Told him he’d have a better chance of staying alive at home,” Shana says, mouth quirked in a twisted sort of grin that puts Leia more at ease. “Somewhere out there, he’s saying ‘I told you so…’”

At that, Leia can’t help but let out a soft laugh. “My father thought I was in greater danger than he was, going out to Scarif. The galaxy has a terrible sense of humor.”

“Bail was the reason I joined at all,” Shana says quietly. “Worked with him on his first senate campaign, and he kept in touch after Palpatine took power. The galaxy lost two of the kindest souls in your parents—you know that, don’t you?”

Leia doesn’t trust herself to speak, so merely nods.

“And we’ll keep fighting. All of us. For them, and for you, Princess.”

Leia can’t decide if this makes her feel better or worse.

Mon Mothma lingers in the doorway long after everyone else has left, and Leia stands facing her, feeling awkward and small for the first time in years. She’s run out of words, and she doesn’t know how to act around the one person who was closer to her parents than anyone else on this ship.

“I’m so sorry, Leia,” she murmurs, and she wraps her arms around her. Leia leans against the older woman’s shoulder, gripping her tightly, but the embrace reminds her too much of her mother, and this time she doesn’t know if she can hold the tears back. She pulls away and murmurs a hasty apology before she flees back to her own quarters.

***

The stabbing headaches continue to plague her, as does the occasional sensation of her whole body being pricked with needles from the inside out. The pain often fades as quickly as it arrives, but she’s finding it increasingly difficult to ignore, especially when it continues into the second week following her escape. It hasn’t interfered with her work, and she’s not about to let it, but she still lives in fear of up and collapsing in the middle of a briefing.

She sneaks into the medical bay in the middle of the ship’s night cycle, when it’s not staffed by anyone but medical droids and a lone soldier who’s drawn guard duty for the night. She begs his silence and grabs the attention of a 2-1B unit, who runs a scanner over her body and draws blood from her arm while she sits on top of a medical table that feels all too much like the bed from her old cell.

“Your adrenaline levels are high—not surprising, given your activities with the Alliance—but that shouldn’t be the cause of this. Your heart rate is normal, but your neurosensors are…”

“Put it in plain terms,” Leia snaps, and rubs a hand over her forehead. She should be better at controlling her temper than this.

“They injected your body with all manner of drugs,” the droid says, its tone unaffected. “Ones designed to both cause and mimic pain. It will be some time before the latter are fully flushed from your bloodstream.”

“Figures.” Leia closes and rests her head gently against the wall behind her. “I don’t suppose you carry any antidotes to the toxins, do you?”

“Frankly, we don’t see many survivors of the IT-O unit. Most of them die from the interrogation, or are executed later. I can fill a requisition form for the antidote, but time is just as effective a healer.”

_Father once said the same thing about grief. But how do we endure that time?_ “It’s fine. I should have known better than to ask.”

“Rest can also help,” the droid says pointedly. “In fact, I’m recommending that you be relieved of all duties until—“

Leia jumps off the examining table and waves a threatening finger at the droid’s face. “Recommend anything, and I’ll guarantee you get taken apart for scrap the moment we hit the next base. I was never here, understand?”  

She practically runs for the door, not caring anymore if anyone sees her. The only thing worse than working through the pain is being left alone with her thoughts, and there are some things Leia just can’t face.

***

Rebel Intelligence has to be rebuilt from the ground up. Nearly all of Cassian Andor’s people died with him at Scarif, and those who survive aren’t at high enough code clearance to sort through the reams of data he left behind. The upper-level generals are so consumed with the task of finding a new base that it’s left to her to accomplish the more covert work of recruiting new operatives and establishing something close to a bedrock of hard intel. The news that the Empire is offering a million credits for her head puts her in the company of Mon Mothma and other high-profile generals, unable to battle in the trenches and endanger troops on the ground, and she’s grateful for the ability to do something useful while the Alliance regroups.

It’s unsettling, sorting through a dead man’s belongings, and Leia’s only consolation is that there’s little personalization to Andor’s effects. Most of what remained in his bunk on was hastily gathered into a storage container during the evacuation from Yavin. The datapads and sizable collection of firearms are now scattered around a workroom table on _Home One_. There’s also a small vibroblade that Leia picks up before she begins to sort through the datapads. There’s an inscription carved into the well-worn handle in a language she can’t read, and she wonders how long Cassian had kept it with him; if it was a family heirloom or simply another weapon in a long line of those he’d fought with over his life. A lump rises in her throat at the thought, and she pockets the blade. Perhaps somewhere out there, there’s someone she can return it to.

She borrows R2 from Luke to help her in slicing the codes, and Shana stops by to lend a hand when she can. She’s a field agent first and foremost, but she has a better understanding of how Andor ran his unit, and she can make contact with the few operatives who were abandoned in the field after Scarif. More importantly, Leia senses that, like her, Shana is looking for anything that can distract her from facing the overwhelming loss of Alderaan.

“We can use Shadowcast to send messages to most agents,” Shana says, and Leia remembers sitting in meetings when Intelligence first established the network that sent out encrypted messages through HoloNet ads. “But there are a few dozen agents who’ve been in place since before we set it up. Mostly on Core Worlds, which makes things trickier. They’ll have been in the dark since Scarif.”

“So what makes most sense, keeping them where they are or trying to get them out?” Leia studies a communique from an agent on Kuat dated a month ago; from the sound of it, his cover is close to being blown.

“It’s difficult to know for sure. Andor kept things pretty close to his chest. And then he started letting his K2 unit do his filing for him…”

“The organization’s even worse than that droid ever was.” Leia shakes her head.  

R2 makes an indignant-sounding whistle and rocks back a bit on his legs. Leia’s nothing as proficient in binary as she’d like to be, but she has a suspicion the combination of bleeps and whistles translates roughly into “Up yours.”

She smiles in spite of herself, but she suppresses a sigh when she turns back to the datapads. So much uncertainty is contained within them, and even now, she has difficulty accepting anything less than solid answers.

“The Corellian operation should be our top priority,” Shana says. “They’re some of our longest-standing field agents, and our stepping stone to the rest of the Core Worlds.”

R2 trills in agreement, and Leia nods. “If we lose a foothold there we lose some of our most valuable inroads.”

“Not to mention our biggest source of recruiting. Do you know how many Corellians have joined the Alliance in the past year alone?”

Leia rolls her eyes. “Don’t remind me.” Han Solo has stuck around, against all odds, but it’s a fact she prefers not to dwell on.

Shana pauses at the sight of her latest decoded missive, lips pursed. “I don’t know how they’re going to get another message to us, our encryptions have changed so much. If we’re to get information to them, someone will need to go personally.”  

“I’ll ask Draven who we can spare. Most of our pilots are out in the field, or training new recruits…”

“I’m a pilot,” Shana says. “I can go.”

Leia opens her mouth to respond and closes it almost instantly, before something stupid like _“It’s too dangerous”_ comes out. There isn’t anyone left in the Rebellion who doesn’t understand the risks, isn’t prepared to do what needs to be done. Instead, she nods and says, “I’ll see about getting you a ship.”

She seems to sense what Leia is holding back, and reaches out to take her hand. “It should be me, Your Highness. Something to make up for sitting out at Scarif.”

“There’s nothing to make up.” Leia knows it sounds like a plea, but she can’t seem to stop herself.  

“All the same.” Shana gives her hand one final pat and rises for the door. “We do what we can, until we can’t anymore.”

***

Draven authorizes use of a Y-Wing for the job, and Leia stalks the bridge of _Home One_ the week after Shana goes dark, monitoring the comms and waiting for any news that might come through on the encrypted channel. She sends off about half a dozen other missions while she waits, including Luke with the newly christened Rogue Squadron on recon for a possible base out near Wild Space. It’s that and the Corellian channel she checks most often, working to quell whatever guilt she feels by not being out in the field with them.

“Anything?” Draven has taken to hovering over her station for hours at a time, something she tries not to be too irritated by. She’s the youngest person by far in the upper command channels, and without even an official ranking she suspects her presence has rankled those such as Draven, who hadn’t worked closely with her or her father before Yavin. So far, though, her results seem to speak for themselves.

“We pulled out our Kuati operative yesterday; he managed to get through on an old encryption channel. There’s not much more to be gained from keeping him there; the whole planet is crawling with Imps.”

“We’ll get a new alias for him when he returns. Rogue Squadron?”

“Nothing yet. I told Skywalker to send a transmission when they made landfall, but their signal could be jammed, that far out…”

Draven snorts in resignation. “Let’s hope he’s up to the job. It’s a big risk, putting a farm kid in charge of a whole squadron.”

Leia manages to hold back an angry retort, but she can’t help turning around to glare at him. “You’ll have to take that up with Dodonna, not me. He’s certainly proven himself so far, as much as anyone else in that—"

“ _Home One_ , _Home One_ , come in,” a tinny-sounding voice suddenly comes through Leia’s speakers. She recognizes Shana’s voice, and her fingers fly across the keypad in front of her in an effort to zero in on the transponder’s homing beacon. “This is Killik Two. I’ve made contact with the agents, and they’re secure on Corellia. I’ve given them access to Shadowcast, and they know what channels to reach you.”

“Excellent. Our rendezvous coordinates are the same; you’re cleared to jump whenever you’re ready—”

“Can’t,” comes the terse reply. “CorSec’s impounded the Y-Wing; I think they’ve traced it back to the Alliance.”

Her heart thuds a steady rhythm against her ribcage. “Do they have a lock on you, or just the ship?”

“Hard to tell right now. I’m keeping an eye on it for now, trying to see—”

The sound of blasterfire, then a sharp yell. The transmission dissolves into static, and Leia pounds once on her comm station, giving in to wild hope that it’s just an equipment malfunction.

“Killik Two? Shana!”

But there’s nothing from the other end, and Leia stares at the comm screen. The dim rushing sound fills her ears again, and she pulls the headphones off her head, barely registering the pain of the earpiece suddenly being yanked out of her ear. She springs to her feet and sways at the sudden movement, a wave of dizziness and pain overtaking her whole body before she grips the back of the chair to center herself. She looks up at Draven, his face the expressionless mask of a soldier waiting for a report, and she straightens to look him square in the eye.

“Killik Two is down.” Her voice is shaking. “But Shadowcast…Shadowcast is secure on Corellia.”

For a moment, Draven’s face softens. He looks as if he wants to say something, but Leia meets his gaze unflinchingly and he hardens again. Somehow, she’s grateful. “Understood, Your Highness. Send a transmission to all Corellian agents and have them confirm their position.”  

The entirety of the bridge seems to press in on her, and when she finally finishes encrypting the message an hour later the edges of her vision have started to blur, whether from grief or exhaustion or some horrible combination. But there’s nothing left for her but to keep going, to try and silence the haunting, desperate whisper that dogs her at night—that she’s failed her parents, failed Alderaan, and now, with Shana’s blood on her hands, will only bring failure to the Rebellion.

***

Another week and Rogue Squadron still hasn’t checked in. Leia does her best not to think about it. There are more raids to coordinate and long-term campaigns to strategize, and each time she envisions the death of another grand moff she feels something close to triumph. She supposes that should frighten her, but she chalks it up to retribution and keeps pressing forward. Besides, it’s the only time she feels much of anything, anymore.

She’s running on her third cup of caf and about two hours of uninterrupted sleep, and so she’s not quite certain she’s hearing properly when her comm station pings an alert from an open channel. But it trills a second time, drawing Draven over her shoulder once more.

“Who…?”

She puts it through on the overhead speakers, her muscles tightening at the movement. If anyone can call them on an open channel, their whole operation might be compromised.

“ _Home One_ , this is Rogue Leader,” Luke’s voice sounds over the comms, uncertain and pitched slightly higher than normal. “We’ve gotten to—“

“Rogue Leader, the line isn’t secure,” she barks. “Scramble your channels before you hail us.”  

It’s paranoia, she’s sure, but there’s no telling how many transmissions the Imperials are monitoring or how well they can trace the frequencies back to the source. Luke swears under his breath, but it’s loud enough for Draven to hear. He raises an eyebrow at Leia, and she determinedly avoids his gaze. The transmission ends in static, and it’s another two minutes of Leia waiting with bated breath before an alert pings on one of the encrypted channels.

“Right, uh…” Luke’s voice comes through once more. “ _Home One,_ is this line secure?”

Frustration rises in Leia’s throat, but she releases it with a deep breath. “You’re clear, Rogue Leader, go ahead.”

“We’ve done a full recon on the Almarin system, and it’s a no go. It’s uninhabited, but it looks like Imperials still do flyovers on orders of the sector governor. We scouted a couple other systems, but…”

“You _what_?”

“My idea, _Home One_ ,” Wedge Antilles’ voice pipes in. “Thought we wouldn’t get another chance at this sector for awhile.”

The frustration is tightening into a hard knot in the back of her throat, and it’s a struggle to keep her voice even. She tries to remind herself that this isn’t the Imperial military, where defiance of orders means court-martial or worse, and that the Rebellion can’t survive unless people think on their feet. “And? Did you find anything?”

“A couple of possibilities. There’s an asteroid field with a couple of rocks large enough for us to set up camp in, but nothing we really should have as our first choice. The Imperial governor keeps too tight a leash out here.”

“Understood. I’m sending you our rendezvous coordinates in three…two…” Leia pounds her fingers so hard into the keyboard she feels a nail snap off. “One. Acknowledge receipt.”

“Acknowledged. We should be back at about 0800 hours.”

“Don’t take any detours this time,” Leia snaps, and breaks off the communication. She relays the message to the deck officer and resists the urge to massage her temples.

“This is exactly what I’m talking about.” Draven shakes his head, and his tone is so condescending Leia wonders if she can’t throttle him after all. “We can’t be letting kids fresh off the farm be put in charge of…”

“Save it.” Leia says through clenched teeth. “If they make it back here in one piece they’ll have done more than anyone you’ve commissioned so far.”

But it’s a hollow insult, and Leia wonders why she’s defending the brash actions of Rogue Squadron, when she knows as well as Draven the cost of errors. The simple answer, of course, is that they’re all the Alliance has got left.  The thought is enough to fill her with despair.

She’s on the bridge through the night cycle and into the next morning, when an alert pings that a dozen X-wings have dropped out of hyperspace. She breathes out a sigh of relief, already preparing the speech she’ll give to Luke when he docks in, but she jumps in her chair when an alarm suddenly blares through the bridge of _Home One._

“Imperial cruiser bearing in at twenty degrees,” the captain of the bridge calls out. “Shields up; get General Dodonna on the line. The _Liberty_ is closest to those X-wings.”

It’s protocol for any returning ships to drop out a safe distance from the fleet, to safeguard against possible ambushes like these. Still, a now-familiar fear pulses through Leia when she sees twelve blips pouring out of the dreadnaught and headed straight for the Rogues. But when she hones in on her comm screen she pushes the fear down somewhere deep, until there’s nothing but her and her station and a job that needs doing.

“Rogue Squadron, you’ve got about a dozen TIE fighters coming straight in.”

“We see them,” Luke’s voice has none of the uncertainty it had before. “Janson, Hobbie, with me.”

For a moment she’s back on Yavin, powerless while she watches the battle unfolding in the sky beyond. But this time no final screams come through the comms, no explosions of shot-out starships echo overhead. One by one, the blips that represent the TIE fighters fade out, and as soon as the Hammerhead corvette reaches the melee the dreadnaught jumps back into hyperspace.

“Got ‘em all,” Wedge’s voice finally breaks through the comms. “No casualties, _Home One._ ”

“Stand by, Rogue Squadron.” Leia cuts the comms and turns back to General Draven. “What’s our status, General?”

“We’re clear for now, but there’s no telling what that dreadnaught will return with. Time to move on, I think.”

“What about the Rogues?”

“Tell them to dock on _Home_ One. It will take time to relay the new rendezvous coordinates to the rest of the fleet; they can’t stay in hyperspace much longer.”

“Right.” Leia flips on the comm channel. “Rogue Squadron, you’re clear to dock on _Home One_.”

“Acknowledged.”

Leia takes off her headphones and lets out a heavy breath. “How the _hell_ did they find us?”

“Could have broken our encryption and intercepted our coordinates; could have put a tracker on one of the Rogues while they were off on their wild goose chase.” Draven shakes his head. “Calling in on an open channel probably made it easy for them to trace our encrypted lines.”

“Right,” Leia repeats once more, her breathing becoming very deliberate.

“Someone’s got to talk to the rookies, Your Highness. Mistakes like this—“

“Mistakes like ordering a hit on Galen Erso?” Leia’s tone is dangerously sweet. The whole bridge falls silent. “Rookies aren't our only weakness, sir.”

Draven stares at her, dumbfounded, and she rises primly from her chair. There is so much Leia has lost, things that she’ll never get back, but she vows here and now that her ability to wipe the smiles off faces of insufferable men will never be one of them.

“No need to worry, General. I’ll talk to the Rogues. It would do them good to hear from someone who’s learned from their mistakes.”

***

Her temper, so easily kept in check on the bridge, begins to fray on the walk from the bridge to the hangar bay. The worst part of Draven’s arrogant pronouncements is that he’s not wrong, and Leia’s chest tightens in fury when she thinks of the danger Rogue Squadron had brought onto the entire Alliance. They could have tracked in so much more than a dreadnaught, they could have been overwhelmed by the TIEs, they could have lost Luke…

The group of pilots gathered in the hangar bay is not nearly as subdued as it should be, with Hobbie and Janson pounding each other on the back and Wedge laughing at something Luke says from his cockpit. Some slow ball of anger that has been simmering in Leia breaks through her at the sight of Luke jumping out of his X-wing, and it takes all her restraint not to slam him back against the ladder leaning up against the cockpit when she corners him. His smile fades when he meets her eyes.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” she demands. “Of all the careless, stupid mistakes—and unauthorized recon?” she rounds on Wedge, who’s come up behind Luke looking a bit sheepish. “You could have gotten yourselves killed!”

Luke gives her a shamefaced smile that would have softened her at any other point, but now only fuels her rage. “Well, we didn’t. That’s got to count for something, right?”

“You’re alive through dumb luck. We’re dead in a month if we count on luck. Relaying on an open comm channel? How backwards is that rock you came from anyway?”

Luke looks like he’s been clubbed over the head. Wedge cuts in. “Come on, give him a break. It’s his first flight as squad leader…”

“And you treat it like a game! This isn’t some _rat chase_ back on the farm. Out here, people die!”

Luke’s face crumples, and Wedge holds up his hands. “Hey now, that’s not fair…”

The snow-capped mountains of Alderaan bloom in her mind’s eye, and her hands clench impulsively into fists. “Don’t talk to me about fair, Antilles. It’s not fair that we’re here at all, but some of us are still capable of following basic orders.”   

“Leia, honestly, we’re trying—“

“Trying’s not enough in this fight!” she shouts. “You think you’re worthy of the name Rogue Squadron? A team that sacrificed everything so that we might have a chance to keep fighting? That name means _nothing_ if you can’t do your damn jobs!”

Her last word echoes off the hangar walls, and she looks around to see that every pilot in the bay is staring at her. She can hear her pulse thudding through her head, and there’s something else burning through her, a raging darkness she didn’t know existed that pools through her stomach and races out her arms. She’s filled with the sudden urge to reach for the blaster strapped to her leg and fire indiscriminately through the bay, and it’s the intensity of the thought and the horror at it that brings her back to herself. Somehow, she forces her fists to unclench, and she levels a last, searing look at Luke and Wedge, who finally have finally been shocked into silence.

“You’re the only squadron at full power right now. _Act like it_ , or I’ll find pilots who can.”

She doesn’t wait for a response before she stalks out of the hangar bay.

***

Mon Mothma calls her into her office less than an hour later. Her best attempts at cooling off have been met with failure, and her heart still pounds against her ribs when she enters the midsize, windowless chamber that’s been set aside for the leader of the Rebel Alliance. A few personal effects adorn her desk, including an Alderaanian river stone Bail had given her years ago. Leia forces herself not to look at it and stares resolutely ahead to meet Mon Mothma’s resigned, tired gaze.  

“You know that Commander Willard recommended you be removed from active duty the moment the Death Star was destroyed.”

_Of course he did._ Leia sits as if carved from stone. “You didn’t listen, I take it.”

“I’m beginning to wonder if I should have.” Mon Mothma eyes Leia with a searching, piercing glance she recognizes all too well, and though Leia yearns to tear her gaze away she knows that if she does she’ll lose the only thing she has left. “The entire ship could hear you tear the Rogues down.”

“They nearly compromised the entire fleet. Any worse mistake and they could have…”

“But they didn’t.” Mon’s tone, usually so soft and patient, has taken on a hint of steel. “And if there’s one thing we’re short on right now, it’s morale. This doesn’t help.”

“Morale does nothing if it leaves us all dead. What the Rebellion needs right now—“

“I’ll tell you what the Rebellion needs right now.” Mon interrupts. “It needs officers who are going to keep their temper under control in a crisis, who can enact a proportional response to the kind of blunders that, yes, are going to happen as long as we’re flying blind. We’re all in new territory here.”

Leia’s hands have begun to shake again, though she can’t even put a name to the icy emotion coursing through her now. She knits her hands tightly in her lap to keep them still, tallying every bone that sits steady beneath her skin. “Are you questioning my ability to serve?”

“Frankly, I’m questioning the ability of every Alderaanian right now. This isn’t the kind of tragedy where you can simply bury your grief and push forward.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Leia snaps. “There’s not a soul in the Rebellion who hasn’t lost something, to say we aren’t strong enough…“

“Even the strongest of us have our limits, child. And when we hit them…”

“I’m not a child!” Leia is on her feet in an instant. There’s a dull pounding that echoes through her head. “Any child you remember died on Alderaan.”

“I know,” she says softly. “I’ve mourned that child, and the family that brought her to us. I’m just not so sure you have.”

She stands there, her breathing ragged, a strange hollow gaping out where her chest should be. She tells herself to leave, run back to her quarters, but her body won’t obey her commands. Mon Mothma looks at her, steady, unflinching. There’s none of the pity she’s come to expect from Draven, nor the overprotectiveness that had driven her so mad with Dodonna and Willard. There’s merely a hint of her own sorrows there, and a kindness Leia's only seen expressed towards those closest to her.

“I’m ordering you on bereavement leave. Two weeks, minimum, though you can take as long after that as you need. You can remain on the ship, if you’d like, but we can make arrangements for you to take refuge on a planet with Alliance sympathizers. We have safe houses set up for dissidents in the most danger.”

“You need me here.” It takes far more effort than it should to keep her voice steady.

“Not in the state you’re in—besides, the war isn’t going to be decided in a fortnight. We’ll get by until you return.”  

“You can’t order me—“

“I can and I will.” The hint of steel has returned. “You’ve been tortured, you were on the Death Star when Alderaan was destroyed. There’s a limit to how far you can run before your sorrows catch up to you.”

“I’m not done running,” Leia whispers. Vader’s hand is on her shoulder once more, forcing her to watch while she screams silently out to her parents.

Mon Mothma gives her the same steady look. “I think you are. And if you run any farther, you’ll destroy yourself.”

Leia is still standing, her arms hanging uselessly by her side. She searches for something to say, anything to convince Mon to let her keep working, but Mon Mothma speaks again before she has a chance.

“Understand me, Leia. Not a day goes by where I don’t miss your father. I’ll never find a better friend, and I don’t—" Her voice breaks. Her lips press tightly together, and she shakes her head. “I don’t know if we can win this without him.”

Tears start to blur around Leia’s vision at the mention of Bail, and she digs her nails tightly into her palms. A memory of the interrogation droid surfaces, its injector lancing through her body, pointed agony breaking out through her sternum. She’s ready to beg for that pain now, beg for it a thousand times over, if it meant she could see her family again.

“He’d tell us to press forward if he were here, I have no doubt. But for you to do that—you have to acknowledge that he’s gone. To yourself, not just to your people.”

The final shell formed around her heart cracks open, and she can’t stop the tears from falling down her face when she gives Mon a wordless nod, not trusting herself to speak. She doesn’t wait to see if she’s dismissed but gives a brief short bow before rushing from the office, wiping at her eyes hard enough to bruise.

The halls of the ship are filled with soldiers and officers hurrying from one task to another, their combined breath and sweat adding to the heavy atmosphere on the ship. The air was always thin on Alderaan, the palace built high and deep against the mountains, and she yearns for that now instead of the humid, musty air that fills her nostrils and suffocates her with its weight. When she finally reaches her quarters her chest is so tight she can barely draw breath, and she slams the climate controls on the wall. Her hair clings to her scalp, sweat dripping down her neck in rivulets, and she shudders at the blast of cool air, more shock than relief.

The gleaming white of her quarters are such a stark contrast from her cell on the Death Star, but still the walls close in around her, trapping her alone with a reality she can't accept. She searches for shadows of her parents, the smell of starflowers that grew on the palace lawns, anything from her home that once brought her peace. But there’s nothing but the dank, recycled air of her quarters and Tarkin’s voice in her mind. She paces twice around the room, the overwhelming grief crashing within her, before a scream tears out from her throat and she collapses onto her knees, chest constricting in sobs.  

***

There’s a drug to induce dreamless sleep, highly addictive and banned on most planets. She’d swiped some from Han on the _Falcon_ with no real intention of using it, a contingency for if she ever truly needed it. When she’s finally cried herself into a numb haze and finds the will to push herself up from where she lay curled on the floor, she fumbles through her duffel to find the bottle. She swallows a pill, the weight heavy in the back of her throat, and she throws the rest in the garbage. She’s barely able to crawl into her bunk and wrap a thin blanket around her before the drug’s effects take hold. The last image she sees before sleep claims her is her mother’s necklace sitting on the bunk shelf.

She’s groggy and disoriented when she awakes, her breath dry and foul in her mouth, and she lets out a shuddering sigh when she sits up in the bed, her feet barely touching the floor when she swings her legs over. She hadn’t looked at her chrono before taking the sleeping pill, so she doesn’t know how long she was out. It’s early afternoon in the next day cycle, though, so it has to have been close to 20 hours. She lets out a soft groan at the thought.

She runs the shower in the refresher unit and shivers at the warm water running down her spine. Her head still aches, but it’s the mild, worn pain of tears and exhaustion; a welcome change from the torture aftershocks that have plagued her for so long. The water rejuvenates her somewhat, and she feels almost light when she changes into a jumpsuit and ties her hair back, emptied out by the outpouring of emotion she’d staved off for so long. She steps tentatively out into the corridor, reluctant to run into anyone who might ask after her.

“Oh, at last!” A cheery, cultured voice sings out, and she looks to see C-3PO standing to the right of her door. “Princess Leia, I’m so pleased to see you fully functional again.”

“That’s a bit of a stretch,” she says, but gives him a rueful smile. “What are you doing here, Threepio?”

“Mistress Mothma asked me to make sure that you were not to disturbed under any circumstances. Master Luke has come by several times, but she gave very strict instructions…”

“Thanks, Threepio.” She pats him on the shoulder. “Could you find Mon Mothma and tell her I’m awake? And tell her…tell her thank you, too.”

Threepio nods and lumbers off. She stares after him as he goes, unsure of what else she’ll say to Mon Mothma when they inevitably meet to discuss any details of her leave. The notion of giving up the fight, even temporarily, is still something she can’t quite accept, but it doesn’t fill her with the same rage and terror it did the day before. Perhaps there are smaller projects she can negotiate her way onto, helping the pilot crews or coordinating services for survivors.

It’s a problem to face later. For now, there’s only one person she wants to see, and though she’s not sure she deserves forgiveness, the news from Threepio encourages her to wander through the corridors of the ship in hopes she might find him.

She finds Luke in the pilot’s barracks. He’s alone, by some miracle, sitting on one of the bunks and stenciling something onto his helmet. She gives a short knock on the bunk closest to the doorway.

His eyes light up at the sight of her. “You’re awake!”

She blinks in surprise, and wonders how he’s able to keep up such spirits even after all that’s happened. “Didn’t think you’d look so happy to see me.”

“We were all worried about you. I mean—“ he blushes and looks down at his hands. “Not that you need worrying, I know you can take care of yourself—“

She smiles and shakes her head. “I know what you mean, Luke. Can I sit?”

He pats the space on the bunk next to him, and she sits down beside him. There’s the outline of the Rebel insignia already on his helmet, and he’s shading in yellow and black outlines around the sides.

“The colors for Tatooine,” he says in response to her unasked question. “It’s funny, you know…all I wanted when I lived there was to get out, never come back. But I don’t want to forget the people I left there.”

“I understand.” The words catch in her throat. “Like it or not, our home defines us. And it’s worth being honored.”

He doesn’t say anything in response to that, and it’s her turn to look down at her hands, gripped tightly together in her lap. She hasn’t come here to impose on anyone’s grief. “Luke, I’m sorry about yesterday.”

He shakes his head. “Don’t be.”

“No, I am. I was cruel, and you deserve it least of anyone here. Things have—“ Her eyes fill with tears, and her cheeks flush with embarrassment. Vulnerability is a luxury she’s never had, but something nudges her to trust him, reassures her that she can let down the defenses she’s built around herself. “It’s hard to know where to direct my anger, some days. I can’t face the thought of losing anyone else.”

He takes her hand, the warmth of his palm emanating comfort in hers. Her lower lip trembles when she looks up at him, but there’s something that feels right, and safe, and his eyes have nothing but compassion when they look into hers.

“You were there for me, on the _Falcon._ After Ben died. You’d just lost everything, and you were there. And, just…you know that I’m here too, right? I’m here for whatever you need.”

“I don’t even know what I need anymore.” She sniffs and wipes her eyes with the hem of her sleeve. “Mon Mothma’s put me on leave, but I don’t know if I can…I can’t sit with this alone.”

“You don’t have to.” Luke lets go of her hand to put the helmet on the floor. “Wedge told me, when he lost his parents, that it helped when he could talk about them, especially with people who didn’t know them. That they lived on then, in their own way.”

A lump forms in the back of her throat. She hasn’t spoken her mother’s name aloud since the ceremony on Yavin. “Has that helped you, with your aunt and uncle?”

“Yeah, a bit. Uncle Owen would hate it, though, if he knew I was talking about him to a bunch of Rebellion moon jockeys.” He laughs a little at that. “Never cared for much but his family and his land. But I don’t think Aunt Beru would mind. She understood, I think, why I wanted to leave.”

“It’s nice, when aunts understand you,” Leia smiles. “My aunts never seemed to. I was always running around wild, and they wanted me to behave like a proper lady, whatever that was supposed to mean…”

She trails off. Even before, she’d taken care never to divulge too many details of her royal upbringing, for fear of sounding aloof or above the people she served alongside. She imagines what her aunts would have say to her about that, and their absence claws tight inside her.

“Tell me about your family,” Luke urges. “Or Alderaan, I’d barely even heard of it before we got R2…”

She closes her eyes and inhales deeply. More than anything, she longs for the sight of the pale mountainside, just one last time, so she knows to treasure it. For a brief, fleeting moment, she’s able to imagine the warmth of the sun. “There were white birds that always flew west. We would mark the seasons by them. My father…my father would always wake me before dawn, the first week of spring, and we would watch for them together. I asked him about running for Senator the first time, on the lawn before the sunrise. I don’t know if I’d ever seen him more surprised.”

“But proud, too, I’ll bet.”

“Oh, the only time I’d ever seen him more proud was the day I was sworn in.” She snorts. “For all the good that did.”

“You’ll make him proud again.” Luke says it with such fierce determination she can’t help but believe him. “You have, already, every day since I met you.”

She hugs him, more tightly than she’s held on to anyone since they all piled on top of each other in relief after the destruction of the Death Star. He smells faintly of engine oil and sweat, and he pats her back awkwardly now, as if unsure of how to react. But she allows herself to rest her head on his shoulder for a moment, trusting for the first time that there’s someone else who can take on the weight of her sorrows.

She thinks of her father, then, of the unspoken words he’d held back in their final conversation before Scarif. She senses some last, final message has been delivered to her, a satisfaction brought from her connection to Luke in a way she doesn’t understand. But for the first time since stepping onto the _Profundity_ a lifetime ago, some semblance of peace settles over her. However long it lasts, she can begin to find her hope.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

>  _Mirrorbright, shines the moon, its glow as soft as an ember_  
>  _When the moon is mirrorbright, take this time to remember_  
>  _Those you have loved but are gone_  
>    _Those who kept you so safe and warm_  
>  _The mirrorbright moon lets you see_  
>    _Those who have ceased to be_  
>    _Mirrorbright shines the moon, as fires die to their embers_  
>  _Those you loved are with you still—_    
>  _The moon will help you remember_  
>  -Claudia Gray, _Bloodline_


End file.
